Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Pioneering disabilities campaigner and crossbench peer who founded the National Centre for Independent Living.
On the island
Eight records
When I was young I absolutely adored rock music. It's very much alive, it's loud and it annoys the parents and so being a bit of a rebel but not being able to do many rebellious things I had a kind of music rebellion and luckily my sister Sharon she would sit with me in her bedroom and she would dance around and the fact that I can't dance doesn't mean to say that I'm not dancing in my head.
Because, as I said, my father [is] highly charismatic. He lived a very full [life] and he thought that he was either Frank Sinatra, James Bond, or Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise. And he lived that life. And he was loved by everyone, including all the ladies.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink
My mother adores piano concertos. She's a huge romantic and she gives all... a sense of romanticism um that has carried us through our lives and we used must have watched this film Brief Encounter about five times when I was young
FotheringayFavourite
Right oh, this is Fairport Convention. And the fathering gay and this Sandy Denny has the most beautiful voice I have ever heard. And this song about a bird that's caged, I dunno. It just touches the nerve.
Graham loved Elton John. He had all his albums, and they were played over and over. Well, there were three in the marriage myself, Graham, and Elton John.
Johnny was one of the main leaders of the more radical fringe of the disability movement. Choices and Rights is what we fought for and what I'm still fighting for.
Nigel Hawthorne and Derek Fowlds
I've always loved politics. I've always wanted to be in politics. Yes, Minister is exactly how it happens. I know because I've seen it.
This is Van Morrison Have I Told You Lately, and I think there's a line in the song that says You Fill My Life With Laughter. You know, when somebody comes in to your life and makes you laugh again and loves you and you have a second marriage that is as blessed as your first, you really have got it all. This is the track that we played at our wedding in the New Forest.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:38How does [needing another person to live] affect your sense of self in terms of your privacy?
I feel that I can be alone if I want to. We can all be alone in our heads. That's where I probably get my privacy in terms of putting people around me all the time. Well, in most cases it has been an absolute privilege. You know, I've had hundreds of women and men come into my life to drive me, to dress me, to do my hair. And each one of those persons has given me a little gift of understanding, and I probably understand people more than most people, because I've had a lifetime of observing and trying to understand them. And all I would say is, you can be private. I am private. I've got up to the most naughty and mischievous things, and I haven't really missed out one little bit.
Presenter asks
6:51Would you welcome an entirely democratically elected second chamber?
I would if democracy welcomed disabled people. It's incredibly difficult to get elected as a disabled person, not just because of the stereotypes that society holds about us in that... oh, they're lovely, but they couldn't really cut the mustard. So we have all of that. Then we have the environment. Can you imagine me going round door to door knocking on people's houses, asking them to vote for me? I mean, I can't even get out of their driveway.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
because I had to choose my subjects to get them all done in time. So I never did maths, and I never did geography ... I want to know more about the world.
The luxury
Electric wheelchair with caterpillar tyres, solar powered and robotic arms
so that I can build my own shelter. Otherwise I'm going to be really stuck.
Is it true that your father told you when you were very young that you were destined for great things?
My father definitely believed that I was destined to do something special, and he was one of the most formative people in my life. Wherever the family went, I went too, and he did not accept she can't come in here, ever.
Presenter asks
9:59What sort of person is your mother?
Well, she was married to the lovable rogue, so you can imagine she needed to be extremely strong. She's an extraordinarily strong woman, um, who has dealt with... she had two kids who had [spinal] muscular atrophy at a time when there were no resources no support for women with severely disabled children. So she just got on with it. And in a way, that was quite good, because I felt very ordinary, very normal.
Presenter asks
17:12How did you go from not being taught at all [at special school] to suddenly passing exams in a relatively short time?
Well, I guess I went to what was the disability grammar for kids who didn't get a g education. I began to learn what it was like to do proper lessons, to read proper books, and it was just a joy, and I just ate it up. Like a hungry lion.
Presenter asks
26:16Can you tell me what happened when you were admitted to a hospital where the medics didn't know you as a person?
When I went into hospital with my routine chest infection, I was extraordinarily ill, as I always am. And the doctor who was clerking people in, and I was then with my second husband, Roger, and he turned to Roger and said, Your wife's very, very ill. I presume she won't want to be resuscitated in her condition. I was too ill, I was out of it. And thank God I was with somebody, and Roger said, No, you must do everything that you can to help her. What do you mean in her condition? And so I was treated, and then I they had to put me in intensive care, and yet again they said, Well, look, she must be pretty much at the end of the road. And he was so afraid that he came back and he grabbed the picture of me getting a doctorate and showed it to the people there and said, This is my wife, not what you assume you see in the bed. You treat her like you would treat any person.
“I am me because of my condition, not despite it.”
“I've never been expected to live beyond my first birthday.”
“I think when your parents believe in you you're unstoppable, don't you think?”